Emotional Poverty

In Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What Schools Can Do About It, veteran educator and brain expert Eric Jensen takes an unflinching look at how poverty hurts children, families, and communities across the United States and demonstrates how schools can improve the academic achievement and life readiness of economically disadvantaged students. Jensen argues that although chronic exposure to poverty can result in detrimental changes to the brain, the brain's very ability to adapt from experience means that poor children can also experience emotional, social, and academic success. A brain that is susceptible to adverse environmental effects is equally susceptible to the positive effects of rich, balanced learning environments and caring relationships that build students' resilience, self-esteem, and character. Drawing from research, experience, and real school success stories, Teaching with Poverty in Mind reveals * What poverty is and how it affects students in school; * What drives change both at the macro level (within schools and districts) and at the micro level (inside a student's brain); * Effective strategies from those who have succeeded and ways to replicate those best practices at your own school; and * How to engage the resources necessary to make change happen. Too often, we talk about change while maintaining a culture of excuses. We can do better. Although no magic bullet can offset the grave challenges faced daily by disadvantaged children, this timely resource shines a spotlight on what matters most, providing an inspiring and practical guide for enriching the minds and lives of all your students.

Laura Smith argues that if there is any segment of society that should be concerned with the impact of classism and poverty, it is those within the “helping professions”—people who have built their careers around understanding and facilitating human emotional well-being. In this groundbreaking book, Smith charts the ebbs and flows of psychology’s consideration of poor clients, and then points to promising new approaches to serving poor communities that go beyond remediation, sympathy, and charity. Including the author’s own experiences as a psychologist in a poor community, this inspiring book: Shows practitioners and educators how to implement considerations of social class and poverty within mental health theory and practice.Addresses poverty from a true social class perspective, beginning with questions of power and oppression in health settings.Presents a view of poverty that emerges from the words of the poor through their participation in interviews and qualitative research.Offers a message of hope that poor clients and psychologists can reinvent their relationship through working together in ways that are liberating for all parties. Laura Smith is an assistant professor in the department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. “Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, [this]is an impassioned charge to mental health professionals to advocate in truly helpful ways for America’s poor and working-class citizens . . . beautifully written and structured in a way that provides solid information with digestible doses of in-your-face depictions of poverty . . . Smith’s appeal to the healing profession is a gift. She envisions a class-inclusive society that shares common resources, opportunities, institutions, and hope. Smith’s book is a beautiful, chilling treatise calling for social change, mapping the road that will ultimately lead to that change. . . . This inspired book . . . is not meant to be purchased, perused, and placed on a shelf. It is meant to be lived. Are you in?” —PsycCRITIQUES magazine “Smith does not invite you to examine the life of the poor; she forces you to do it. And after you do it, you cannot help but question your practice. Whether you are a psychologist, a social worker, a counselor, a nurse, a psychiatrist, a teacher, or a community organizer, you will gain insights about the lives of the people you work with.” —From the Foreword by Isaac Prilleltensky, Dean, School of Education, University of Miami, Florida “This groundbreaking book challenges practitioners and educators to rethink dominant understandings of social class and poverty, and it offers concrete strategies for addressing class-based inequities. Psychology, Poverty, and the End of Social Exclusion should be required reading for anyone interested in economic and social justice.” —Heather Bullock, University of California, Santa Cruz

Improve outcomes for students in poverty by understanding their developing brains Economic hardship is changing our students’ brain structures at a genetic level, producing psychological, behavioral, and cognitive issues that dramatically impact learning, behavior, physical health, and emotional stability. But there is hope. This groundbreaking book by one of the nation’s top experts in brain science and resilience offers solutions that will change minds, attitudes, and behaviors. Learn about how problems develop between people of different races, how the brain develops in persistent poverty, and how it might react to solutions. Inside, you will find real-life applications on topics including: • The lack of culturally competent instruction and its impact on students of color • Poverty′s effect on language development and how it can be positively influenced • The importance of reading • How to counteract the effects of the widespread stress in lower SES environments Children make up 23% of the U.S. population and account for almost 33% of those living in poverty, making the education system our most distressed institution. In The Poverty Problem, you’ll learn how to increase students’ perseverance and confidence and positively impact outcomes by arming yourself with research-based instructional strategies that are inspiring, realistic, and proven to work.

The 5th edition features an enhanced chapter on instruction and achievement; greater emphasis on the thinking, community, and learning patterns involved in breaking out of poverty; plentiful citations, new case studies, and data: more details findings about interventions, resources, and causes of poverty, and a review of the outlook for people in poverty---and those who work with them.

Over 15 million children live in families subsisting below the federal poverty level, and there are nearly 4 million more children living in poverty today than in the turn of the 21st century. When compared to their more affluent counterparts, children living in fragile circumstances-including homeless children, children in foster care, and children living in families affected by chronic physical or mental health problems-are more likely to have low academic achievement, to drop out of school, and to have health and behavioral problems. The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Child Development provides a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms through which socioeconomic, cultural, familial, and community-level factors impact the early and long-term cognitive, neurobiological, socio-emotional, and physical development of children living in poverty. Leading contributors from various disciplines review basic and applied multidisciplinary research and propose questions and answers regarding the short and long-term impact of poverty, contexts and policies on child developmental trajectories. In addition, the book features analyses involving diverse children of all ages, particularly those from understudied groups (e.g. Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, immigrants) and those from understudied geographic areas (e.g., the rural U.S; international humanitarian settings). Each of the 7 sections begins with an overview of basic biological and behavioral research on child development and poverty, followed by applied analyses of contemporary issues that are currently at the heart of public debates on child health and well-being, and concluded with suggestions for policy reform. Through collaborative, interdisciplinary research, this book identifies the most pressing scientific issues involving poverty and child development, and offers new ideas and research questions that could lead us to develop a new science of research that is multidisciplinary, longitudinal, and that embraces an ecological approach to the study of child development.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.